The speaker (Katie McManus) advises artists/creatives to examine their "money story"—their beliefs about money and self-worth—because a poor relationship with money leads to undercharging, attracting low-respect clients, and potentially living at poverty level. She emphasizes that personal worth is priceless and separate from price, and encourages framing services by the impact they deliver (illustrated by a termite extermination analogy: real harm prevented vs. trivial actions).
Number one place that might seem like a backwards way to start is you have to work on your money story. Your relationship with money will either support your success or completely you up on the more mild side of this. When you have a shitty relationship with money, you're not charging enough. So you're underselling your services. You're probably attracting clients who aren't your sole clients, who maybe don't respect your time as much as people who would be paying more would. And in the worst case scenario, you are so drastically undercharging that you are living at the poverty level. You're barely able to feed yourself and your family. And when I start working with clients and we talk through what their pricing is and how much they think they can get away with charging, there are a few things that come up. There's a huge conversation around your belief in your personal worth and what you deserve to make and what your work is worth paying for. I would argue there's no price that can be put on you. You cannot attach worth to yourself. You are priceless. There's no one like you. There's no one who does work the way you do work. And quite frankly, your clients, when they come to buy your service, to buy whatever it is that you're providing, they don't give a. They genuinely do not care. What they care about is what your service is going to provide them. On the other side. At the basic level, let's talk about a service that people can actually pay for. Right? It's bug killing. If you have termites in your house, chances are you've hired a company to come and terminate the termites. Now, it's important to do this because termites can cause extensive damage to the structure of your home. And if there's extensive damage to the structure of your home, guess what? You're going to have to move out because it's not safe to live in. And what happens when the house is not safe to live in? The resale value plummets because whoever is going to move into that house next has to either do extensive renovations and reinforcing or they have to just tear it down and rebuild. Different value than moving into a house that is fully functional and move in ready you're going to pay to have someone come and kill the bugs. Now, I want you to think of like the kids that will take a magnifying glass and burn ants on the sidewalk. Not saying I agree with them. Essentially they're doing the same thing, but with different impact. The ants aren't harming anyone. The ants are just going about their day. They're enjoying the sunshine. All of a sudden like, wow, this spot is kind of warm. A little warmer than it was over there. Wow, it's really, really hot. This is my impersonation of an ant. Now, you wouldn't go down the street and ask little Johnny if he was willing to come over and use a magnifying glass on your termites. That's not going to be the thing. So when you think about your service, I want you to think about what is the greater impact it has. Are you the equivalent of seven year old Johnny, who's kind of a dick with a magnifying glass, or are you actually protecting the integrity of someone's house? Your worth has nothing to do with the price of your services.
